Charter Communications: Bad service and interference

Charter Communications, Madison WI

I am posting this in the midst of a crisis that I am afraid I am going to have to wait a truly long time to have resolved.

I have my internet service with Charter, but my TV service with Dish network. On Thursday, at 8:45 pm, both my TV and internet service went down simultaneously. I figured it was a cable outage and called my landlords, who told me that Charter had been messing around in the basement. I subsequently met a neighbor who told me that he had service go down as well at the exact same time, and that he had seen Charter trucks outside. His service had come back up in 5 minutes, but I wasn’t so lucky.

I called Charter several times subsequently, and was promised resolution by EOD Friday. Nothing was done. Unfortunately, I had organized a party to have some friends over to watch the NCAA Final Four games on Saturday and I was getting antsy. When I subsequently called on Friday night, I was promised resolution by Saturday. Towards this, the Charter customer service rep warned me that I would not have this restored unless I was home when the service guy came. Time was not specified. I waited all day Saturday at home and no-one had called by 4:00 pm. I cancelled my party and called Charter again. I demanded to speak to the supervisor and though I was furious, I did not say anything offensive. Yet, the customer rep found the need to warn me that I shouldn’t swear.

The supervisor told me that the first few customer reps should not have promised me resolution by Saturday as the earliest they could get a tech in was by Tuesday. I was flabbergasted to say the least. I had to compromise TV viewing for 5 days though my service had nothing to do with Charter. The supervisor did promise to try and get a tech to resolve it by EOD Saturday as he expected someone to be in the neighborhood.

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a Charter guy in my basement later that evening and was told that he had no information with regards to my complaint. He was servicing other units and could not look at mine without a work order. So much for the supervisor requesting the neighborhood tech to have a look!

Much disgusted, I have given up and decided to spend my weekend at the office, so that I can stay connected.

Charter’s culture of long wait times (it if takes that long to reach a customer rep, odds are they have such a high volume of complaints) and broken promises has left me utterly irritated and I plan on changing service to a cheaper DSL service. The last straw was their callousness in the face of having disrupted my TV service though it had nothing to do with my Charter internet service.